Y. A. Week: What Should I Read Next? (Rebel With a Cause Edition)

This is the second in a series of posts asking, if I love insert YA title here, what adult title will I love (and vice versa, too!)? The first post, Dragon Edition, can be found here. We'd love your recommendations too, so add 'em in the comments! From Mike Braff - Phillip Pullman's landmark His Dark Materials series was written as an anathema to the C.S. Lewis-style of pseudo-religious fantasy, stories that celebrated righteousness and always had the good guys coming out on top. In Pullman's series, Lyra 'Silvertongue' Belacqua, aided by the truth-revealing device known as the Golden Compass, sets out on a mission to confront the old religious order and bring about an age of reason. Along the way she learns that the things she has been told about her world are almost uniformly false, leading to an iconoclastic and thrilling trilogy of books. Certainly a bit heady for a YA series, The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass are never preachy and resonate with teens and adults alike. Take that attitude toward authority, amplify it, complicate it, and re-cast it in a beautiful but dark world and you have China Mieville's Bas-Lag Novels, a trilogy of books set in the world of the same name. In Perdido Street Station, Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin is a scientist who stumbles upon the dark secrets of the city of New Crobuzon and embarks on a horrifying, exciting, and epic adventure to fight the soul-stealing creatures that are attacking his home. Though The Scar and The Iron Council take place in other areas of Bas-Lag, the series themes of ancient evil and corruption of government continue unabated. New readers will revel in Mieville's "smash-the-state" mentality in the same way they celebrated Lyra's quest to bring down the prevailing religious and political behemoth. Both authors write in a gripping, descriptive style that audiences won't be able to put down. So if you've finished with the adventures of Lyra and company, go check out Perdido Street Station, NOW! Editor's note: As a huge fan of the His Dark Materials trilogy, I'm now itching to read China Mieville!